Commentary: Wake up! We’re still at war!

By Charles Young
George Washington High School

At the beginning of the Iraq War, the conflict was endlessly covered by the media. The war saturated every news medium from television to major magazines to indie ‘zines and on-line blogs.

The carnage and deaths were reported nightly. You flipped though news channels, and blood poured from your television. It seemed that for several years, the war was the main topic of the evening news broadcasts and the morning headlines.

But open Time magazine now, flip through the Charleston Gazette, turn on the news. Yes, the war is mentioned, the latest car bomb is noted, the latest Iraqi intergovernmental screw-up is revealed, and yes the Gazette has its little black box stating the latest updated body count.

But these are mentioned with an air of flippant nonchalance. As if we have now lived with these things so long that they are accepted.

Well I have news for you: we are still at war, and people are still dying. Innocent men, women and children on both sides of the conflict are being killed for a war that is being fought for no reason.

“But what about freedom?” you ask “What about spreading democracy and fighting terror abroad before we have to fight it at home?”

We are not freeing anyone. It’s not America’s right to police the world. We have no right to shove our lifestyle and politics down another country’s throat. And no one in the Saddam Hussein’s government had anything to do with 9/11.

If you believe that we are fulfilling some higher purpose in Iraq, helping the people or in some way keeping America safe, then you are either ignorant or highly misinformed. These are merely tactics of distraction that are meant to play on your emotions.

“If you don’t support the troops, you’re not a patriot!” they say. That is completely false. The greatest support we could show for these men and women is to bring them home. They volunteered for the military thinking they were going to serve their country and to do some good, not end up in the middle of Vietnam 2.0.

This country has been led astray be arrogant politicians, lies and propaganda. Our supposed leaders are lying and getting away with murder. They are stripping the people of their civil liberties and trampling upon the very ideas on which this country was founded.

Anyone remember the Bill Of Rights? Freedom of Speech? The Fourth Amendment? We have the right to privacy in our homes and the right to speak our minds. But as these rights are being violated, we are doing nothing.

Yes, it’s now hip to make scathing comments about the president, but what are people doing to stop him? Where are the blistering editorials? Where are the riots? Why are there not people in the streets?

We impeach for consensual sex, but not for the rape of a nation?

I love my country and the things that I believe it stands for. I was raised to respect the value of human life and to question wrong. I would do anything for my country — including give my life - but I hate to see it misrepresented in this way.

The current administration is bordering on fascism and that is no exaggeration. Our country is being run by ego-worshiping Christians and tyrants who have no respect for the people they are supposed to be serving.

And it makes me sick to my stomach to see that so few people care.